April 2007. Christian Whiting’s guitar project. We glued the maple top, in two book-matched pieces, onto the mahogany body. We used Keva blocks as spacers to keep the clamps from damaging the surface. The black banding is cut bicycle inner tubes– stretched evenly but very tight. This rig did the job. The top fused cleanly to the body, and has held up very well (almost four years now).

Outside Blackwater Cafe, Stockton, CA. Oct 30, 2009

The Dirk Hamilton Band has a home port called The Blackwater Cafe, a great little joint on Yosemite Street in Stockton. I don’t know exactly how long Dirk’s been playing there, but let’s just say decades. Always a treat to see him there, its got special mojo. This pic was taken on a break between sets, outside the front doors. Guirtarist Gary Roda is the gent on Dirk’s left.

Live at the Poet & Patriot. Santa Cruz. November 18, 2010.

Christian Whiting of The Best Friends, finding his mojo at the Poet & Patriot, Santa Cruz, Nov 18 2010. Chris is playing a ’51 RI Fender Telecaster, tobacco sunburst. The Best Friends play original songs that fall in the zone between traditional funk and jam band, with a dose of Captain Beefheart for good measure. Worth checking out.

1979. Those were the days. The bits of white strewn about on the stage: popcorn, thrown by the basketful.

The fact that this is apparently their real name is poetic. It’s rare enough to come across a voice that arrests the ear, makes you stop, savor; want more. But to have a pair of singers with such a penetrating quality is a real find. I don’t know anything factual about them other than what you can read online, but ever since our intern Donna DeLoera turned me on these fabulously dark and musical sisters, I keep coming back to their Myspace and YouTube for more. Here is a recent offering, Love You More, that I dare you to hate.

Yes, what about art? I’m not so naive as to say movie companies are not in the biz of entertainment. They are. But do you deny that the movie companies, all of the main ones, have more than occasionally created great art? Something is wrong about renaming your company PolyGram Filmed Entertainment or, in the record biz Sony Music Entertainment. It should be PolyGram Pictures, or Sony Records. Remember MGM Pictures “Ars Gratis Artis?’– ‘art for art’s sake?’ If you declare entertainment as your mission, how does that inspire? Will you ever make a great picture, or great record, with a name like ‘Acme Entertainment?’

This now long-established naming trend is another disastrous corporate influence in the field of the arts. It comes from considering movies and records to be in the same kind of trivial category as pinball machines and carnival booths. ‘National Amusements’ is the corporate name of a chain of movie theatres owned by the Sumner Redstone family, and it is directly influenced by the arcade game industry. I love arcade games, but films and records are a thing apart, and capable of affecting us on profound levels. Entertainment yes, but so much more!

Warner Music Group, Capitol Music Group, Concord Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment be gone! Give me Smash Pictures and Groove Records, or anything that has aspirations beyond entertainment. Let’s at least believe in the possibility.

Scratch that. CD sales, downloads, concert tickets, and merch sales are all falling. I made an intense, albeit anecdotal survey of our artists, other management’s acts, indie labels and stores– and found a SERIOUS drop off over the last twelve months. This is a correction, folks, a contraction, a shake-out. This not an abstraction: fewer people will be making a living from music next year than this year. Maybe a lot fewer.

One thing I discovered was that CD sales at gigs, which often totaled, during recent years, in excess of $600/night for even a modest indie act, were not genuine indicators. In this way: by manning the table and talking up the fans who were buying, I discovered they were motivated mainly by a desire to support the artist– not because they were absolutely compelled to have the music. A Charity Buy! And after buying 4, 5, 6 or more cds at the artist’s shows over the years, and often buying repeats so they could give them to friends, these great folks are no longer buying. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe they feel they’ve done their bit, and don’t need to keep carrying the artist– “let somebody else step up.” Maybe they’re just not buying cds anymore– yes, that era is most definitely ending. Or maybe it is just a turn of the wheel, and that behavior, of buying stuff at shows, for no particular reason other than exhaustion, is over.

Well, that is bad news for us who work with indie musicians. Add to that a depressed concert market and you have the makings of the demise of a form. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I only know it doesn’t look good.